Suggested citation:
Kelly, T. L. (2000). "Transformation Analysis Part II: Nonviolence as Transformation." (Unpublished graduate paper, Portland State University, October 2000). Portland, OR: Author.
Introduction
Maybe we are asking the wrong questions. Maybe we are making the wrong assumptions. We ask, "Why do people commit violence?" when the right question may be "Why do people choose nonviolence?" We assume that violence is the anomaly, when the correct assumption may be that nonviolence is the anomaly, according to human history. At the very least, making the latter assumption may lead to a better understanding of violent behavior. This paper looks at issues surrounding the traditional questions and assumptions and suggests new ways of looking at the problem of violence, with the aim to see nonviolence as a human-constructed transformative process.
History of Violence
Most studies of human behavior as it relates to the choice between violence and nonviolence are approached as a means to understand violence. Violence has enjoyed a long and productive career in the history of humankind. Konrad Lorenz, anthropologist and author of On Aggression, cites many examples of "What Aggression is Good For" in a chapter so named. Though most of his thesis is devoted to showing evidence for a natural resistance to committing violence among species of all kinds, he does acknowledge that violence has been a successful evolutionary tool. In the specified chapter, he outlines the obvious reasons for aggression that have mostly to do with defense of self or territory, mostly between species. Then he asks the tough Darwinian question: Why do species fight within their own species? (Lorenz, 1966) This distinction between inter-species and intra-species aggression is important to an argument for a theory of nonviolence as anomaly. Lorenz finds in his studies of Darwin's theory:
"It is always favorable to the future of a species if the stronger of two rivals takes possession either of the territory or of the desired female ... [however] ecologists have recently demonstrated a much more essential function of aggression ... Unless the special interests of a social organization demand close aggregation of its members, it is obviously most expedient to spread the individuals of an animal species as evenly as possible over the available habitat. To use a human analogy: if, in a certain area, a larger number of doctors, builders, and mechanics want to exist, the representatives of these professions will do well to settle as far away from each other as possible." (Lorenz)
According to classical authors, the Iron Age people of northwest Europe executed people as punishment for crimes or perceived social imperfections such as homosexuality. Many of those who died violent deaths were later found preserved in the bogs. Bodies were found that had been knifed to death, strangled, hacked and mutilated, and other long-suffering forms of murder. (Archaeology, Dec. 1997) It is beyond the scope of this paper to debate whether or not northwest Europe during this time was subject to limited farmland availability and scarce resources, but it would be useful to seek out this information in any in further inquiry on the nature of nonviolence. The connection between overpopulation and the use of violence or nonviolence to resolve conflict cannot be understated in an argument for nonviolence as an anomaly and therefore an evolutionary transformative process.
(The history of "civilization" is actually rather short in comparison to the relatively longer history of characteristic "unicivilized" behavior, as briefly suggested in the examples here. For the purpose of brevity, I will skip centuries of the history of violent behavior in order to focus on the present.)
For the moment, let's look at interpersonal violence as a case for seeking authentic anomalous behavior. One of the most influential psychiatric theories of criminal violence is that which is put forth in "Murder Without Apparent Motive: A Study in Personality Disorganization" (Satten, Menninger, Rosen, & Mayman, 1960). These four doctors are affiliated with the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. Their theory marks a pivotal shift in our perception of violence. Satten and his coauthors divide the "sane" from the "insane" by explaining apparent senseless murders as indicative of psychopathology. In other words, people are violent because they are either permanently or temporarily insane, and therefore they can't be held responsible. This theory has predominated in the courts and in the psychiatric field for decades.
The problem with this influential theory is that it excludes the possibility that very sane people can choose violent behavior to resolve conflict, or that nonviolence may be the true anomaly. A significant criticism of this theory, and one that suggests a nonviolence-as-anomaly theory, comes from Lonnie Athens, Ph.D., a sociology professor. Athens has gone to great lengths through scholarship in his academic field of criminology to explain violence as a developmental process -- not a psychopathology. (Athens, 1992) "The basic assumption behind my theory is that crime is a product of social retardation. Social retardation exists when people guide their actions toward themselves and others from the standpoint of an underdeveloped, primitive phantom community (1), an us that hinders them from cooperating in ... the larger society in which it is embedded." (Athens, 1997) Though his "violentization" theory is biased towards culpability for the crime resting with the criminal because violence is a developmental process, not a psychopathology, he does suggest that violence has been a primary drive throughout human history. Richard Rhodes, nonfiction journalist, who wrote a book about Athens theory (2), recognizes this aspect. "Violentization is evidently a universal mechanism for shaping children to become adults prepared to survive in malignant communities. When the larger society itself was malignant, violentization was adaptive." (Rhodes, 1999)
Consider this:
"Both men and women are volatile, prone to quarreling, and quick to take offense at a suspected slight or injury. They are jealous of their reputations, and an undercurrent of tension, even latent animosity, accompanies many interpersonal relationships. Dominance and submission, rivalry and coercion are constantly recurring themes, and although the people are not lacking in the gender virtues, there is an unmistakeable aggressive tone to life." (Read, 1954-1955)
Though this appears to describe contemporary domestic relations in Western civilization, it is actually a description of the domestic culture of the Gahuka-Gama "primitive people" of Eastern Highlands, New Guinea. It is not such a stretch to assume that a tradition, extending to the present, of intra-species relations among humans, is founded upon a significant level of interpersonal violence.
What can this tell us? Perhaps one assumption we can easily make is that violence has played a much more predominant role in the evolution of humankind than nonviolence. Humans to this day continue to be more attracted to violence than nonviolence. What is in the news lately? What do people want to read about, see on TV, slow down on the freeway to look at? Violence holds human attention, while nonviolence - unless the nonviolent method implies a certain level of threat - does not hold our attention. Upon this observation has been formed many a theory of violence as an anomaly; in other words, we ar fascinated by violence because it deviates from the norm. Who has tested the theory that violence is attractive because we are responding to a deep-rooted evolutionary "norm" that is more familiar than this newfangled "nonviolence" we have only manufactured quite recently? In other words, violence is the norm, and nonviolence is the deviation. In order to become a nonviolent species, we must go through a conscious transformation of our own device.
History of Nonviolence
In comparison to the documented history of personal violence, a comparable history of nonviolence is relatively new. Only very recently have we begun to look at nonviolence in and of itself as a tradition and a method. Though there is scholarship for what could be determined as "centuries" of a history of conscientious nonviolence (Stiehm, 1968; Wehr, 1995), most of what can be classified as a traditional historical record of interpersonal nonviolence dates back to just after World War II. The Nazi Holocaust seems to have been the spark that led to interest in discovering the reasons for seemingly senseless violence, which was by its sheer volume regarded as a personal sort of violence by many. From this and other actions followed nonviolence movements by conscientious objectors, protests using the method of Ghandian nonviolence, and other forms of organized nonviolence. Still, relatively little of this short history of nonviolence refers to interpersonal violence in the manner described by Athens. While we have now laid a strong foundation for a study of nonviolent movements and institutional nonviolence, we have hardly begun the work of such a foundation for discovering why people choose nonviolent methods of conflict resolution when violent methods are just as available and in some cases easier to accomplish and more immediately successful.
Why do people choose nonviolence? Lorenz in his study makes the distinction between aggression and violence by putting behaviors that do not lead to bodily harm under then heading of "aggression." Aggressive behavior, he argues, has always been used to ward off other species, but not to kill them, as a method to announce territorial boundaries. Aggressive behavior includes making threats of violence, but not necessarily carrying through with those threats. Lorenz finds that in most species the threat is more likely to be used than actual violence.
This is important to note in the history of nonviolence, because much of what we call "nonviolent behavior" in answer to a conflict has some sort of implied threat. Mahatma Ghandi's method of nonviolence is a good example of the power of implied threat. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of people on marches that were announced as "nonviolent peace marches." But implied in these marches was a threat - we will break the law, boycott your businesses, and disrupt the status quo if you don't pay attention to our demands. Most of these efforts led to violence against the peace marchers, but even when marches do not lead to any violence, there usually remains the implied threat that disruption of the status quo is inevitable.
So, the history of nonviolence is implicated in the history of violence, not only because it is a reaction to violence (not vice versa) but because the very tactics we use to commit nonviolence carry with them the threat of aggression. We may be developing methods to resolve conflicts without violence, but we have not ruled out the use of aggression, in the form of implied threat, to carry out those nonviolent methods.
Conclusion
In one respect there seems to be some indication that crowding (overpopulation) may have something to do with general aggression, and many studies cited here before and since Lorenz's assertion suggest consistency with this indication. (3) This potential factor in violent behavior is missing in many recent inquiries. On the other hand, evolutionary function may play a larger role in personal violence than we care to admit in the present climate. To make sense of either of these theories, and to direct our attention toward prevention of personal violence, it is useful to discover first why people chose nonviolent means to resolve conflict, and to approach this study with the assumption that nonviolence, not violence, is the anomalous factor in an evolution of human behavior. If we start from there, we might find patterns that elude us now in the deluge of statistics we've collected regarding violent behavior, but which have not resulted in any significant "cure" for violence (how can we cure that which is normal? It would be far easier to "cure" people of nonviolence). If we start with the assumption that nonviolence is the anomaly, we can begin asking the same questions about nonviolence as we are now asking about violence. Why do people choose not to kill each other in order to resolve a conflict? What motivates the nonviolent resolution? What developmental process occurs to form the perpetually nonviolent individual? These are useful questions.
Notes
(1) The "phantom community" is explained by Athens earlier in the book as the community of immediate relatives and other mentors of the individual, as that individual perceives their influence on his life, in his or her mind - thus, the phantom community is always "in your head" influencing you to do things a certain way.
(2) Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes, 1999, Knopf, New York.
(3) Though I have eluded to the population connection to violent or nonviolent behavior in this paper, I have opted not to expand on it so that I can devote another paper entirely to the question.
References
"Bodies of the Bogs." Online Feature: Archeaology: December 10, 1997: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/index.html.
Athens, Lonnie. 1992. The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals: Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
--- 1997. Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited: Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Lorenz, Konrad. 1963. Translated to English: 1966. "What Aggression is Good For." On Aggression. New York: MJF Books: 23-48.
Read, Kenneth E. 1954-1955. "Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuka-Gama, Eastern Highlands, New Guinea." Oceania 25 (1-2): 233-82.
Rhodes, Richard. 1999. Why They Kill: New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 250.
Satten, Joseph, Karl Menninger, Irwin Rosen, and Martin Mayman. 1960. "Murder Without Apparent Motive: A Study in Personality Disorganization." American Journal of Psychiatry (July): 48-53.
Stiehm, Judith. 1968. "Nonviolence Is Two." Sociological Inquiry 38: 23-30.
Wehr, Paul. 1995. "Commentary: Toward a History of Nonviolence." Peace & Change: Vol. 20 No. 1: (January): 82-93.